Mary Lou Williams: Duke’s own ‘First Lady of Jazz’

In honor of Duke’s Centennial, The Chronicle is highlighting pivotal figures and events throughout the University’s history. Here we take a look at Mary Lou Williams, Duke’s claim to fame in the jazz world:

When Mary Lou Williams arrived at Duke in 1977 as the University’s first artist-in-residence, she was already an icon in the jazz world, having earned monikers like “The First Lady of Jazz” and “The Lady Who Swings the Band.”

Williams came to Duke following an illustrious career as a pianist, composer, arranger and passionate jazz advocate. At the University, she directed the Duke Jazz Ensemble and taught courses on jazz history and its roots in African American culture, becoming “one of the focal points for Black students and culture on campus.”

Though, her music career actually started 65 years earlier.

At two years old, she was playing the piano, and by age six, her music career had kicked off.

“[It] seems that I used to get in … a great mess around the house when my mother was practicing,” she said in a 1976 interview. “What she did really [to keep me out of trouble] was to put me on her lap while she was playing [the organ].”

Williams made her professional debut at just age 12 when she filled in for a pianist in a traveling show in 1922. She toured the country under the name Mary Lou Burley, playing for famous jazz artists such as Jelly Roll Morton and Duke Ellington.

In 1929, Williams moved to Oklahoma to join Andy Kirk and his touring band the Clouds of Joy, where she became popular for her piano solos and adroit arrangements such as “Froggy Bottom,” “Walkin’ and Swingin,” “Little Joe from Chicago” and “Mary’s Idea.”

Williams also explored the bebop style, a fast-tempo variation of jazz pioneered in the 1940s by artists such as her friend Gillespie. Williams wrote several bebop compositions, including “Oo-Blah-Dee,” “Tisherome,” “Knowledge” and “Lonely Moments.” In 1946, she recorded “Waltz Boogie” with Girl Stars, one of the many bands she organized.

She moved to Europe in 1952, performing in various locales for two years until one night, she walked off the stage during a performance in Paris. Williams was exhausted from the music scene, and she resolved to stop performing altogether.

“I felt I had absolutely no one to turn to, no one to talk my troubles over with. I grew bitter at life, at people,” Williams said. “I walked around as though I were in a fog. I met people who spoke but I didn’t see them. … I was searching for something I did not see, and I did not know what it was. But I know I was searching for something.”

During her musical hiatus, which ultimately spanned three years, Williams turned to the Catholic Church for spiritual fulfillment. Her friend and fellow pianist, Hazel Scott, was visiting Paris at the time and found Williams, advising her to pray and read the psalms.

“This great and wonderful talent introduced me to what really saved me — God — that is what I was searching for,” Williams later wrote in her diary. “Slowly … the deep spell of despondency that had held me in its grasp for days began to lift, and I saw things I have never seen before in my mind’s eye.”

With the encouragement of Gillespie, Williams returned to the stage in 1957 at the Newport Jazz Festival.

It was a renaissance for Williams. She reentered the scene as even more of a powerhouse, both musically stronger and more spiritually passionate.

Williams’ newfound religious inspiration intertwined with her music throughout the 1960s and ‘70s. She composed multiple jazz and blues-based liturgical pieces during this period, including “Black Christ of the Andes,” “Mass for the Lenten Season” and “Mary Lou’s Mass.”

“Jazz and the spirituals are the only American-born art,” Williams said. “… Because of the deeply religious background of the Black American, he was able to mix the strong influence with rhythms that reach deep enough into the inner self to give expression to outcries of sincere joy, which became known as jazz.”

Williams brought this perspective to Duke in 1977, where she taught, performed and composed for the next four years until her death in 1981 following a battle with bladder cancer.

By the end of her career, Williams had composed across stylistic jazz variations from the 1920s to the ‘70s, written over 100 compositions and arrangements, recorded over 100 records and performed on stages across the United States and Europe. Her final exit from the stage was accompanied by a legacy marked by innovation, experimentation and creativity.

Two years after her death, Duke established the Mary Lou Williams Center for Black Culture, an affinity space for Black students and a place “dedicated to building community, fostering belonging and cultivating joy for all Black people at Duke University.” On Wednesday nights, the center hosts “Jazz@ the Mary Lou” — live jazz performances in honor of its namesake.

In 2024, Anthony Kelley, professor of the practice of music, discovered an unfinished last work from Williams titled “History,” which he completed. The composition draft included the sections “Suffering,” “Spiritual,” “Ragtime” and “Gospel,” and the final version was performed by the Duke Wind Symphony in April.

“In her mind, I think she wants music to be a big, human story,” Kelley said. “It starts with some dissonance but gradually comes into focus and shows the comfort of human interaction. She was trying to write something a bit bigger, that let jazz connect to a larger world of music.”

---